I have been so busy blogging elsewhere that I haven’t had a chance to update my own personal blog. There has been quite a bit of stuff in the business world and my personal world..I guess I can catch everyone up on the business front first. I haven’t really blogged about the business side because I had a few things up my sleeve that I didn’t want the world to know yet. So here it goes…I kind of figured out how our company will employ the social atmosphere that is encompassing the web. Most companies that are running social networks/communities feel autonomous in the sense that they do not acknowledge the other main players out in the field. Let me digress, FaceBook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, JustinTV and our Skateboards.com Blog etc…now in realizing that our market was already embedded within these other communities, I decided to reach out and exist where they exist with the intent of luring them back to our network to participate. When you go to www.skateboards.com you will see badges for our FaceBook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, JustinTV and our Skateboards.com Blog . In addition we are also streaming a LIVE TV channel for Skateboards.com TV through JustinTV. All of these components have helped elevate our social inbound traffic by bringing awareness of Skateboards.com to the masses. But…just having the profile is one thing the real trick is how you syndicate the content between the different sites…that is my secret and if you want to know we can discuss over the phone when you write a check to invest! After orchestrating the social attack we began to develop content and promote it through the various channels I have listed above. Our first LIVE Skateboards.com TV event was Black Tide courtesy of Total Assault and Interscope records. Skateboards.com TV, Sam Diggs, DK, Menace, Fringe and Zane made our way to the Shoreline Amphitheatre which was hosting the Mayhem Festival. We coordinated with the powers that be and linked up to interview the young metal band known as Black Tide.
These guys are on fire and will be huge soon…did we mention that they are going to be playing with Motley Crue in Japan????Here are some pics of the days events…
Being that I do radio on 102.5 KDON, we have access to artists as they come through. One in particular we got to interview for Skateboards.com TV was HardNox out of Concord California representing Universal/Blackground records.
These guys are off the hook, they busted out their smash “She’d Rather be with the DJ”
acapella for the viewers and now we actually sponsor them through our brands Santa Cruz Skate Shop and Fringe Clothing.
Skateboards.com TV didn’t stop there, we then negotiated an X-Games 14 appearance with future partners SponsorHouse.com. For two straight days we streamed LIVE from X-Games 14 out of the SponsorHouse.com booth, with a direct view of the Vert Ramp and tens of thousands of X-Game fanatics. Skateboards.com TV commanded the LIVE stream with thousands of viewers watching and chatting with
SponsorHouse athletes Ducky, Ruben and X-Games Silver Medalist Jeremy McGrath who was kind enough to give us a short interview and sign hundreds of autographs for waiting fans. Needless to say we were able to gather a larger viewership due to our social quadrangle of promotion by interlinking all of our social exposures and broadcasting through Skateboards.com TV, JustinTV and SponsorHouse.com. Here are a few pics from the X-Games 14 scene
On a personal note, our newest son Carter is getting so big he turned 7 months old and has been the highlight of our lives lately. He seems to be learning things daily, like how to reach out when we want to pick him up and orchestrating getting his nene into his mouth on his own. My older son Zane is working hard at Santa Cruz Skate Shop making his old man proud as I now know he is cut from the same cloth and can handle the business when he gets old enough. My Oldest, Autumn just recently performed in front of a packed house at the Seattle SuperDome. My Kids make me so proud…
On a more serious note, my father, my biggest supporter has been in ICU for about two weeks now fighting for his life…if you have ever watched a loved one go through this it is really humbling and life changing. I love you Dad!
Chat LIVE with Black Tide Saturday July 12th at 2:30pm PST. Click Skateboards.com TV to watch the Skateboards.com crew hang out backstage of the Mayhem Festival and asks them your questions. This is your chance to talk live with Black Tide.
We jumped in the car about 10am and headed out to the Arco Arena located in sunny Sacramento California. Sam Diggs and I locked in our media passes
and made our way straight to the catering and loaded up on some great food. Making our way to our seats, we noticed that the place was packed and ready for the hometown boy Urijah Faber. The undercard fights we re good…but the Miguel Torres vs. Yoshiro Maeda fight was off the chain
Miguel and Yoshiro went toe to toe until Torres sealed Maeda’s eye shut and the fight was called off in the 3rd round. The Arco arena was packed with anticipation for the Urijah Faber and Jens Pulver fight and they were not to be disappointed. Favorite Faber lived up to his quickness and power while Jens Pulver held his ground and gave it his all, it was Faber that received the unanimous decision
Keeping the World FeatherWeight Belt firmly around his waist
Back at the press conference, Jens Pulver brought down the house with his emotional testimony of how his life had changed and what being a family man meant to him…there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. I think I am going to name my next kid Jens…
Once again as Faber took the stage, he commanded the respect of the press as he answered the barrage of “what next” questions..to which he aptly replied…” I am ready for anyone and anything, for the time being I am going to travel the world and be a rockstar”
Insane fights, great seats and awesome company…the UFC/WEC knows how to put on a fight!
I met Phil Burns at ICANN about 6 months ago. One of the nicest and smartest people you would ever want to meet. Phil and I stay in touch via different electronic means (you know us tech geeks, can’t just pick up a phone we have to twitter, skype, facebook etc.) discussing his latest brainchild or awesome new connection. So I wake up today and I go to my Facebook profile and I just about collapse…I am in disbelief of what I am reading. Phil’s 22 month old daughter has Leukemia…it took the wind out of me. Even as I sit here and type I am holding back tears. Phil has eight wonderful kids and has probably the best outlook on life I have ever experienced. Now he and his family are faced with the challenge of helping his daughter beat this terrible cancer. Being a spiritual person, I will put all of my energy into my prayers for Serenity and the Burn’s family and I am requesting that anyone that reads this blog to please donate some cash through the widget in this post to help them out financially.
The Burn’s family needs support right now and we all need to pull together and make it happen. These are good people that are facing a major challenge. So give them your monthly coffee budget or forgo a dinner out so that a family can make sure their little girl will get the care and support she so truly deserves. Phil I love you man and I will pray everyday for your little girl.
Hey so we bank at Santa Cruz County Bank on Bay Ave and we have been eyeing this spot for some time. It was right next to Pete’s coffee and Nob Hill foods and looked like a total slam dunk for a skate shop…but it was occupied as a high end women’s clothing…not any more….WE TOOK IT!!! The lovely town of Capitola has a Santa Cruz Skate Shop now. With three schools on the street, New Brighton Middle School, Soquel Elementary and Soquel High School it will serve about 3000 kids that walk/drive by on a daily basis. The new Santa Cruz Skate Shop will carry all the latest deck/wheel/truck/clothing brands you can handle along with our very knowledgeable staff…you can bet that we are going to be a fixture in Capitola. When you get a chance come on down and check it out…here is a pic taken by staff photographer Grady Brannan. The address is Santa Cruz Skate Shop 819 Bay Ave Capitola Ca. 95010 831-621-3019.
I am passing along this post sent to me by my boy Donovan Dresti
Skateworks Jam event called “Shredwood” was definitely that to say the least. The Jam consisted of street in the morning, and the main bowl event in the afternoon. The street jam was stacked with up and coming talent of all ages from all over Nor Cal. All styles were present from power skating to tech, and best trick contests were called out by the judges at random. The Judges consisted of heavy hitters pros, such as Colt Cannon, Justin Strubing, and Toad.The best trick contests consisted of the best blunt trick, and best trick over the Red Bull barrel. Winners received prizes and $ supplied by Skateworks and were skating hard which was good for the eyes. The Main Bowl event that was supported by Red Bull for a $1000.00 first place was simply amazing.
The top five skaters to make the finals were simply breath taking. High flying airs, over vert pivot fakies, rodeo flips on the vert section by Josh Mattson, blunt kickflips, inverts, 360 airs over the spine and on and on. The contest was so amazing that at one point I needed water and sunscreen as Josh Mattson came out on top for 1st place. Everyone in the finals was skating super fast and just one upping each other left and right, the crowd that surrounded the bowl cheered what seemed every few seconds. The Pro line up ofjudges had a difficult time judging the event as the skating was so powerful. Shredwood seemed much like a pro contest from the talent which was great for all that attended, including myself. The winners were given their prizes by the Red Bull girls, which finished the event nicely.
All I gotta say is Shredwood was a hit, won’t forget it, and can’t wait till next year…
So today is my birthday…I woke up early to a beautiful sunrise and an equally beautiful wife and son. It wasn’t until I walked out my front door that I realized today was going to be intense.
You can see the smoke rising from the canyon which is about 5 miles as the crow flys…what happened next has only happened two other times in my life. One was the ‘89 Loma Prieta earthquake and the other was 9-11. I went in and woke my wife and told her to come and look out the front door, I needed another opinion. I didn’t want to overreact, yet I also didn’t want to be complacent. To make matters worse we had a high wind advisory with gusts over 35 mph.
After calling our next door neighbor (he is 72 and lives alone) to let him know we would make sure to grab him, we both spent the next few hours watching the news, checking websites and fielding phone calls from friends and family from all over. Basically, we didn’t know what to do. The fire was moving fast, it seemed every report added another 1000 acres. Most of what is on fire is rough, unihabited forest with pockets of houses and neighborhoods almost impossible for fire crews to reach them. To make matters worse these people have livestock and only one way out. Think about it for a moment…what do you take? When do you decide to leave? I mean the fire hovered 5 miles from our neighborhood all day…so we decided to get our most important things together in case we had a short amount of time to evacuate, photo albums, baby books, wedding stuff, financial papers, pet food, some clothes to change into and hard drive backups in case we had to leave our computers behind. I was suppossed to be enjoying my day off with my wife and new son and instead we are getting prepared in case shit hits the fan. Numerous friends and family called throughout the day offering a place to stay or help getting anything we wanted out of the house which really warmed my heart. I look at it this way, the most important thing for me to get out is the family…if you have time for extremely important valuables then cool…otherwise it can all be replaced. I only state this because they were showing people with truckloads of furniture and useless materialistic items evacuating their homes…I mean a couch is not that important. Anyhow, after being glued to the TV and computer for 5 hours the fire has now consumed over 4000 acres and is 0% contained. They predict over 10,000 acres and hopefully contained by Sunday. For now, the winds have died down which might help, but we are still in harms way until this thing is somewhat contained. Hopefully all the people that are displaced have a roof over their head and some food. Tonight will be a long one as it will be hard to sleep knowing it could turn this way, it probably won’t…but that doesn’t make it any easier. I will pray for the people who lost their homes and are displaced, the fire fighters that are putting their lives on the line and the kind people that are opening their homes and hearts to help. Below are the remains of a pickup that didn’t get out in time and an end of day shot of how the smoke is moving around.
So I have been a bit MIA for the last two or three weeks…been working on a major project….as you know I have the pleasure of running the best action sport domains in the world Skateboards.com , Surfboards.com and Snowboards.com all of which are social sites for action sport enthusiasts to communicate and interact with like minded people. Now…I am proud to announce we have relaunched our commerce piece specifically for Skateboards.com . Now we have thousands of skate decks, wheels, trucks bearings…you name it we have it. The cool thing is this is just the beginning of it all. We are already working the other domains to get ecommerce up and running as well. Now we are not only going to be doing a b2c campaign, but we will be also including a c2c version relatively soon for all of our users to sell their old equipment, trade snowboards or just sell that Sony Playstation 3 you don’t want any more. Lots of cool things on the way for the action sport enthusiast. Stay tuned as I go back in to stealth mode and make some more magic happen with my awesome team.
I have one of the best jobs in the world. However, figuring how to keep up with whats going on I have to be very involved in new media and web technology. Skateboards.com , Snowboards.com and Surfboards.com are social sites that allow the the action sport enthusiast to interact with like minded people. Now here is where it gets interesting…take a guy like me who has Face Book, LinkedIN and a Skateboards.com profile…I have the need to keep my Professional and Active lifestyle side separate, but I have content or friends that I want to cross share etc. Herein lies the dilemma, the need for a single source log in with content portability allowing me to exist in multiple social experiences without allot of maintenance. Now I get allot of demo’s of software, ideas, widgets and the like. But when we went through this demo the other day, I really see the future of social mash-ups and how people will be controlling them in the very near future. One of my biggest hangups about people having multiple social profiles (I call these people social trotters) is how they want to manage their experience, including content and friends. Imagine if you could have a single log in to your Face Book, Flickr, My Space, You Tube, Skateboards.com and Basket Weaving all in one, you could see what site has activity, share a photo across social sites, keep a professional profile and a wild and crazy profile, the list goes on and on. So get ready, don’t be afraid…join that Basket Weaving (or Surfboards.com) site and know full well that in the not so distant future you will participate in dozens of social sites. I am sure people are scratching their heads wondering what I am talking about, trust me its coming.
I have the wonderful opportunity to be involved and sponsor our local Roller Girl team, the Santa Cruz Roller Girls. I must say when we first started talking with them, I didn’t think it would really get this big. It was July or August of 2007 and The Morning Madhouse on KDON was doing an interview with the SCRG about their future games and how to be a part of the team etc. when I called in to the studio to give them a hard time. The result of that call ended up with Santa Cruz Skate Shop and The Morning Madhouse scrimmaging against the Santa Cruz Roller Girls in front of 1400 people. Now, mind you none of us had ever really been on roller skates in a while (especially Showbiz), however we did have a trick up our sleeve with our ringer Evenflow Ron. After one period and multiple tailbone slams, the SCRG team beat us by one measly point.
Since then we have joined forces with them, promoting every bout (did I mention they have sold out the last two bouts!!!) on The Morning Madhouse and becoming the Santa Cruz Roller Girl outlet at Santa Cruz Skate Shop. So it was no surprise when Sam Diggs and I made our way over to the Santa Cruz Civic to watch our team bout the Angry Beavers of Redding to see another line wrapping completely around the block…the people of Santa Cruz had more than embraced this new production called The Santa Cruz Roller Girls. My boy Lex Vandenberg of Survivor fame was one of the phenomenal announcers and after losing my voice again, we watched our girls completely trounce the Angry Beavers and send them packing with a whopping 121-22 win Saturday night. If you have Roller Girls in your area, get out there to support them, buy their merchandise and take the family out for some good ole American fun. Hey Mark Cuban, get on this now before Vince McMahon or Dana White does.
